Bill Powers, UT's president for nearly a decade, dies at 72

Ralph K.M. Haurwitz @ralphhaurwitz

Sunday

Mar 10, 2019 at 10:55 AMMar 11, 2019 at 6:11 PM

Former University of Texas President Bill Powers, whose leadership of the flagship campus in Austin was long, accomplished and periodically controversial, died Sunday morning at Dell Seton Medical Center at UT. He was 72.

His death was announced by the university. The cause was complications from a fall and oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy, a rare, adult-onset muscle disorder, the university said.

Powers had been hospitalized in September after falling outside the School of Law, his intellectual home for more than 40 years. Rehabilitation and additional hospitalizations followed. He also was hospitalized in 2011 with a pulmonary embolism, a sudden blockage of a lung artery; he was treated with blood thinners and recovered.

Powers was the second-longest-serving president in UT history, holding the post for more than nine years until he stepped down in June 2015 to return to the Law School, where he previously had been dean. Under his watch as president, UT overhauled the undergraduate curriculum; completed an eight-year fundraising campaign that netted $3.1 billion; launched the ESPN-owned Longhorn Network in a deal giving the campus $300 million over 20 years; and collaborated with local, state and UT System leaders to establish the Dell Medical School.

TIMELINE: Bill Powers stood firm during tumultuous period

"Bill was an eloquent and fierce champion for UT students, faculty and staff," said university President Gregory L. Fenves, his successor. "Never was this more evident than in the early and mid-2010s, when Bill put every ounce of himself into defending the soul of our university. He bravely stood up for what was right, and he fought against a view of higher education that would have compromised UT's constitutional charge to be a 'university of the first class' while setting a dangerous precedent for public research universities across the nation."

Larry Faulkner, who preceded Powers as president and named him law dean, said one of Powers' greatest achievements was improving undergraduate education following recommendations from the Commission of 125, a blue-ribbon panel. Powers instituted wide-ranging signature courses for all freshmen that were designed to open and excite their minds, and he even taught one himself, a philosophy course titled “What Makes the World Intelligible."

"That's a very substantial and valuable legacy," Faulkner said. "But not to stop there, he also worked out the basis for the founding of the medical school at UT-Austin and the medical research activity that flows from it, which is another substantial and valuable legacy."

The last few years of his administration were punctuated by controversy. He complained when the UT System Board of Regents, under pressure from then-Gov. Rick Perry, refused to increase tuition. He questioned the system's massive spreadsheet listing the costs and revenue associated with each faculty member, arguing that such an approach does not take quality into account. His peers across the nation rose to his defense, electing him chairman of the prestigious Association of American Universities in 2013.

Powers was a vigorous proponent of the rich intellectual stew that major universities cook with their teaching and research. He didn't just defend scientific and engineering research, including the sort that does not necessarily lead to valuable commercialization, although that kind of research sometimes does in serendipitous ways. He stood up eloquently for the humanities as well. A 2001 panel discussion was a case in point. When someone suggested that no more scholarly articles on Shakespeare were needed considering that more than 21,000 had been produced in a recent quarter-century, Powers disagreed.

"Literature is reinterpreted and reanalyzed and rethought in every generation," Powers said. "When Sophocles wrote 'Oedipus,' it wasn't a new story. It was an old story, but one that spoke to Greece at the time of Pericles. So having people researching how Shakespeare speaks to each generation — that ought to be an area where fresh ideas are generated and brought into the classroom and disseminated. It's not surprising that Shakespeare and Plato and great works of literature are constantly being reanalyzed and reinterpreted to see what they say to current students and to society at large."

Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp on Sunday said: "There was no greater defender of higher education and the students we serve than Bill Powers. He will be missed by a grateful state of Texas."

Questions about favoritism in admissions dogged Powers for a time. An investigation commissioned by the UT System concluded that Powers appeared to have misled an earlier inquiry by failing to disclose his practice of sometimes ordering that students touted by regents, legislators and other prominent people be admitted despite objections from the admissions office. Powers said he always acted in the best interest of the university. It's an open secret that leaders of public and private colleges put a thumb on the admissions scale from time to time.

Powers faced criticism of various aspects of his administration from some members of the Board of Regents, most notably Wallace Hall Jr., who demanded and received dozens of file boxes containing university records in what Hall's supporters called oversight and Powers' backers called a witch hunt aimed at ousting him. A Travis County grand jury condemned Hall in 2015 but didn't indict him for what it called "abusive excess" in seeking information. Earlier, a state House panel censured Hall for what it described as misconduct and incompetence, but it stopped short of recommending impeachment. Hall's relentless digging nevertheless led to improvements in the handling of open records requests, reforms in the ties between campuses and supporting foundations, and a correction in UT-Austin's method of counting charitable donations.

UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa and Powers had a rocky relationship. Cigarroa, citing a breakdown in trust, eventually asked him to resign by October 2014 or risk getting fired sooner, but Powers insisted that he would stay on until June 2015 — a demand that the chancellor met amid an outpouring of support for the UT president from alumni, donors, faculty members, legislators and students. Time and again, the Faculty Council gave Powers a standing ovation. He was president of UT longer than anyone but H.Y. Benedict, who died in office in 1937.

An academic's academic

William C. Powers Jr. was born on May 30, 1946, and raised in modest surroundings in Los Angeles. He made his way in the world through intellect and hard work. Michael Sharlot, his predecessor as law dean, once called him "kind of a Horatio Alger."

He was an academic's academic, earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and a law degree at Harvard University. He spent three years in the Navy, stationed in the Persian Gulf. He came to the Law School in 1977 as a visiting professor and knew within a couple of weeks that it would be home.

Powers was conversant on a wide range of interests, from quantum mechanics, a theory underlying much of chemistry and physics, to the principles of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Kant and other philosophers. He laced his writings — his legal specialty was torts (wrongs and injuries) — and occasionally his speeches with moral and political philosophy. He was a principal researcher and writer for book-length projects summarizing and clarifying certain aspects of tort law.

He was a fan of Homer — the bumbling main character in "The Simpsons" as well as the legendary Greek poet.

"I think it's the best-written material on television," Powers told the American-Statesman in 2005. "At the end of the day, you may notice that Homer, much as he just doesn't get it, chooses life and chooses his family. I find it uplifting. It is a very complex and interesting text, in my view."

Steven Goode, a law professor at UT, said: "In a university that is filled with extremely smart people, Bill may have been the smartest person I knew. But he had the gift of being able to talk to anyone, without coming off as a showoff intellectual. He could be extraordinarily down to earth and extremely funny."

"He was so smart," said state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who met frequently with Powers on university matters but also because they enjoyed each other's company. "No matter what you were talking about, you learned something from him. He was one of those people who could see around corners."

Powers had an affable demeanor coupled with a certain intensity. He often wiggled his hands as he spoke. He was a devoted Longhorn sports fan, a regular at basketball and football games. He could get downright giddy when UT beat its archrival, Oklahoma, at the Cotton Bowl, and he enjoyed congratulating players along the sidelines and in the locker room.

He was a decent athlete, playing in his early years as a faculty member with law and graduate students on an intramural football team dubbed the Criminal Element that was the 1980-81 champion. He also played squash and golf, the latter with more enthusiasm than skill.

There were bumps on his road to the UT presidency. In 1984, he said he wouldn't be a candidate for dean after some plaintiffs lawyers quietly campaigned against him. Those lawyers were unhappy because Powers had advised state lawmakers about tort reform legislation. He also had served as an appellate lawyer, mainly defending corporations, in tort cases before the Texas Supreme Court.

Powers came to know some of those lawyers and helped them realize he was fairly centrist. When he was named dean in 2000 to succeed Sharlot, there wasn't a peep of protest.

Criticism arose when he joined the board of Enron Corp. in 2000 to oversee an investigation of the Houston-based energy trader's shaky accounting practices. The critics said this posed a conflict of interest because Enron had donated $3.5 million to UT, including $276,000 to the Law School.

Powers' hard-hitting report and testimony on Capitol Hill quieted his critics and dramatically raised his national profile. He made a point of recusing himself from portions of the investigation dealing with Vinson & Elkins LLP, a Houston-based law firm that advised Enron. The firm had donated $1.9 million to Law School programs and provided free legal services in the university's quest to consider race and ethnicity in Law School admissions.

Powers is survived by his wife of 36 years, Kim Heilbrun; five children and their spouses and partners, Matt Powers and Jeny Wegbreit of San Francisco, Kate Powers and Scott Puryear of New York City, Allison Powers and Oscar Useche of Lubbock, Annie Powers and George Franklin of New York City, and Reid Powers and Kelsey McManus of Austin; six grandchildren; and his sister Susan Powers.

A public memorial service will be held at a later date.

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